CROOKBACK DICK REIMAGINED          Saving Richard III from Shakespeare’s calumny seems to have a particular appeal to women: probably because around his accession in the 1480s there surged both female ambition and female victimhood . Both are stunningly present even in Shakespeare’s story of his murders and infanticide , which was basically a 16c court  conspiracy-theory to solidify the dubious legitimacy of the Tudors.    Josephine Tey wrote the brilliant detective story “The Daughter of Time”,  debunking that theory and making ..read more

DIVING ABOUT IN A UNIQUE SHORT-PLAY FESTIVAL          Join me on a parked Hoppa minibus where Henry VIII is chatting up a new Jane.  She is not impressed by the Tudor-Tinder qualifications  of a man who divorced two wives and killed two,  but he  protests that he was “in a bad place back then”.Since faking his death and living on for 477 years  he’s taken up yoga, and deserves a new start.         This fifteen-minute treat is in the most unusual of the Halesworth settings for this year’s INK festival;  why not, since th ..read more

WUTHERING SIBLINGS      Grace Smart the designer sets the scene as we settle in with a sweet miniature moor, all harebells and heather and cloddy bits of earth.  But it rises in the air as soon as Gemma Whelan’s cheerful, swaggering Charlotte Bronte has toured the auditorium demanding to know what our favourite novel is.  The overhead grassland stays up there throughout, just occasionally throwing down sheets of paper or a microphone.           Charlotte opens the family scene with her two sisters – Rhiannon Clements as gentle Anne and Ade ..read more

THE GAME’S AFOOT. EVENTUALLY. Nick Lane’s adaptation of Conan Doyle’s late, broodingly complicated novel has met many huzzahs from Sherlock Holmes fans, previously here, on tour and  streaming. So as a Southwark supporter I thought I should at last have a look now it’s back.   Lane’s take on the 221b household is certainly refreshing: both Bobby Bradley’s lanky arrogant Sherlock and the tweedily amiable Watson of Joseph Derrington are more youthful than usual, and Alice Osmanski’s Mrs Hudson un-Victorian in her laid-back confident impertinence. So far, so modern. They double – every ..read more

DOSTOYEVSKY IN DALTON       “These days” says the man on the empty stage,  “people are precious to me, even when they insult me.  I have woken up”.  His stark features do not smile as he says it, because he has an urgent stoey  to tell.   Greg Hicks, restlessly prowling with a suitcase, making himself shabby, explains how he made a career, made friends, lost both as it dawned on him that ‘human existence is an unhappy accident in a malign universe”, and that there is no reason for anything.   He evokes a Dalston pub where people are drunk,  qu ..read more

CAMPUS RITES AND WRONGS Sometimes, I do like a stage set you could cosily move right into.  Paul Farnsworth’s is a nice  evocation of a Harvard professor’s study: shelves and panelling and framed certificates,  and a leather chair redolent of five generations of chin-stroking academe and Democrat politics.   Oh, and there’s a model yacht: things will happen to that.          The latter matters,  because the witty poster for Paul Grellong’s play, written in 2019  and suddenly even more topical on its European premiere,  has that same p ..read more

HOMAGE TO THE FIRST CELEBRITY DIVA        Last time theatre’s pre-Victorian glory days  – silk breeches, rowdy audiences and Garrickian hamming  – were celebrated on this stage was in 2015: in Mr Foote’s Other Leg by Sam Kelly, with a rumbustious Russell Beale. This time it’s a decade or so later: the century has turned with the final King George, and  actresses were becoming  respectable and idolized .  So we meet our heroine  Sarah Siddons  at her peak of female celebrity, recreated.  by April de Angelis and director Anna Mackmin fr ..read more

HOW TO WASTE A STELLAR CAST       Sheridan Smith is not only a box-office draw  but a rare and genuine talent:  two decades a star  on screen and stage, musicals and drama:  phenomenally  hardworking (she flew off to make a TV series in Greece, complete with toddler, the day after her last curtain call in her sellout solo Shirley Valentine).   In 2016,  her father’s terminal illness during the run of Funny Girl (as usual, selling out) drove her into what she calls a  “meltdown”. She ran away briefly, got a number of tattoos, wanted to hide ..read more

MAGIC . ALWAYS BETTER WHEN DISASTROUS.          God bless Mischief Theatre.  Eleven years ago this coming May I saw THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG in the tiny downstairs space at Trafalgar Studios (upstairs, a dour Macbeth was giving way to Pinter).    It was  fresh in from the Old Red Lion,  where its creators,  Henry Shields , Henry Lewis and Jonathan Sayer began their fringe career.     I am happy to say that my Times review drew producer Kenny Wax to drop in,  and notice that their anarchic student-revue wit was , a rare thing ..read more

KIDS WITH A KICK IN THEM        There’s been an interlockof themes in theatre lately: DEAR ENGLAND at the NT displaying Gareth Southgate’s work in fostering the openness and emotional expression of  topflight footballers (43% of whom are of black heritage and most of working class).  Meanwhile we had FOR BLACK BOYS brilliantly educating the rest of us in what it’s like to be a lad of African heritage in a white majority culture ,    and how annoyingly you are seen,  your nice warm hoodie constantly identified with villainy.        ..read more